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14 May 2012

"Feelings" Part One

In the late 70's, there was a great TV show called The Gong Show. Ordinary people would come and perform on stage for celebrity judges. If they were bad, they were 'gonged' and asked to leave the stage. If they were good, there were awarded points and the performer with the highest score won a trophy and a check for $516.32.

It was usual that each show would carry a variety of talent. One episode, however, had every contestant performing the same song. It went right along with the usual slapstick humor of the program.

I was jolted to a sudden memory of this episode during a recent devotional time. I had seen a young lady on TV who was giving her testimony of her experience with depression and self-injury. Sometimes a song on the radio or a television program will set something alight in me; causing me to go off and seek God in that thing. This was one of them.

In the telling of her story; the sharing of her hurts and victories, she said something. She said she was causing other people a lot of pain. She would be kind one moment and then a jerk the next minute. She couldn't understand why she was acting like that towards people. So she felt that she deserved to feel some sort of pain that she was causing other people. Then the facilitator said this: You get to the point in your life when dealing with anxiety, depression, confidence, fill-in-the-blank, where you just have to feel something.